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Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Bonsai artist Naoki Maeoka

This post is a little tribute to the craftsmanship and artistryof Naoki
Maeoka. He was my “oyakata”while I was playing a deshi-for-a-month during my residency at
the Fujikawa Kouka-en in Osaka (see the post about my work there at http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/my-residence-at-fujikawa-kouka-en-osaka.html).
Naoki is a
resident bonsai artist at Fujikawa Kouka-en Bonsai Nursery in Osaka. He
graduated from Osaka University of Arts and spent sixteen years working as a
graphic designer. He began to pursue bonsai as a hobby in 2001. Eventually, his
passion for bonsai grew so strong that he gave up his corporate career and
completed a traditional five-year apprenticeship under the 2nd generation
bonsai master Keiichi Fujikawa. This led Naoki to attaining professional bonsai
qualifications awarded by the Nippon Bonsai Association. In 2012 Naoki began teaching
bonsai at the Fujikawa International School of Bonsai. He has instructed dozens
of students from all over the world and I am privileged to be one of them.

Here, I put together few before-and-after images of bonsai I witnessed
him styling in June 2015. They represent about two thirds of the trees he
styled during that month. Let’s
start with the pine tree next to Naoki in the image above. This is a classic
Japanese design where the tree evokes that famous pine bonsai illustration from
Somoku Kinyoshu (see http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015086754721;view=1up;seq=4).
The very first tree I observed Naoki to style is shown in the image below. It
is a Black Pine variety with flaky bark. This bark gives a tree the aged appearance
and makes the trunk look much thicker.

Below
is the top view of a wired and styled branch of this tree.

Below
is a Red Pine. Image ‘A’ shows it before the styling, image ‘B’ shows the tree
after the removal of old needles and image ‘C’ shows it after the styling. This tree has been sold before Naoki finished styling it.

Below
are before-and-after images of two more pines.

The
Black Pine shown in the images below is somewhat odd. The images show the
styling done by Naoki in June 2015. To see the previous work done on this tree see
episode 37 of ‘Bonsai Art of Japan’ on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0LOZ3643sM).
This kind of tree presents an artist with a real challenge, a true test of his
abilities so to speak and I believe that Mr. Fujikawa and his apprentices were
able to utilise most of this tree’s potential.

Apart
from working with the trees, Naoki is a highly skilled bonsai pot maker. He carved
the pot shown below from a single slab of clay. This method of making bonsai
pots allows a lot of creative freedom, but it is very time consuming, therefore
pots like this are very unique and valuable.